A New Mental Treatment Based On Attention Improves Anxiety And Depression In Secondary Education Teachers

December 3, 2009

A doctoral thesis carried out at the University of Granada has proved that a mental training based on mindfulness ““an emotional self-regulating tool that consists in focusing on what we are doing, thinking about or feeling at every moment- helps to fight against psychological diseases such as anxiety, depression, concern or complaints about health, very common among secondary education teachers, and is very positive for emotional regulation.

This research work has analyzed the psycho-physiological mechanisms related to the mindfulness, checking the effectiveness of a training program that works as an emotional self-regulating tool. Mindfulness is a type of mental training increasingly popular in the U.S., based on the practice of self-awareness and in terms such as attention, awareness and the reference to a specific moment.

The work, developed by Luis Carlos Delgado Pastor and supervised by professor Jaime Vila Castellar, of the department of Personality, Assessment and Psychological Treatment, has confirmed the effectiveness of training mindfulness abilities applying it to two different groups with defined features: a 20-girls sample with high-level concern and a group of 25 secondary education teachers.

Improvement in both groups

Besides, as a consequence of the mental training, both the girls with chronic concern and the teachers improved their subjective rates of anxiety, depression, concern, complaints about health and emotional regulation, together with certain con psycho-physiological such as, for example, cardiac, muscular and respiratory variables.Delgado Pastor says that, in the light of the results obtained, they have proved the “effectiveness of training mindfulness abilities and human values in the teaching sector as an emotional self-regulating tool, stress prevention for teachers and students, as well as to facilitate the teaching-learning process”.

Accordingly, says the UGR researchers, mindfulness is also useful for persons who are suffering from desadaptative emotional processes, such as chronic concern, anxiety and depression.